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Maimonides, a Medieval Jewish philosopher ( 12th century ) and a Torah scholar on the workings of positive reinforcement

”
. Imagine a small child who has been
brought to his teacher so that he may be taught
the Torah, which is his ultimate good because
it will bring him to perfection. However, be-
cause he is only a child and because his under-
standing is deficient, he does not grasp the true
value of that good, nor does he understand the
perfection which he can achieve by means of
Torah. Of necessity, therefore, his teacher, who
has acquired greater perfection than the child,
must bribe him to study by means of things
which the child loves in a childish way. Thus,
the teacher may say, “Read and I will give you
some nuts or figs; I will give you a bit of
honey.” With this stimulation the child tries to
read. He does not work hard for the sake of
reading itself, since he does not understand its
value. H e reads in order to obtain the food. ,
As the child grows and his mind improves,
what was formerly important to him loses its
importance, while other things become pre-
cious. The teacher will stimulate his desire
for whatever he wants then. The teacher may
say to the child, “Read and I will give you
beautiful shoes or nice clothes.” Now the child
will apply himself to reading for the sake of
new clothes and not for the sake of study it-
self. . . . As his intelligence improves still more
and these things, too, become unimportant to
him, he will set his desire upon something of
greater value. Then his teacher may say to
him, “Learn this passage or this chapter, and
I will give you a denar or two.” Again he will
try to read in order to receive the money, since
money is more important to him than study.
The end which he seeks to achieve through his
study is to acquire the money which has been
promised him. When his understanding has so
improved that even this reward has ceased to
be valuable to him, he will desire something
more honorable. His teacher may say to him
then, “Study so that you may become the presi-
dent of a court, a judge, so that people will
honor you and rise before you as they honor
So-and-so.” He will then try hard to read in
order to attain his new goal. His final end then
will be to achieve the honor, the exaltation,
and the praise which others might confer upon
him.
Now, all this is deplorable. However, it is
unavoidable because of man’s limited insight,
as a result of which he makes the goal of
wisdom something other than wisdom itself,
and assumes that the purpose of study is the
acquisition of honor, which makes a mockery
of truth. Our sages called this learning not for
its own sake. . . .”
Reference:

The third annual conference of Association for Behavior Analysis India was held in The Park Hotel, Kolkata on 8th and 9th Dec’2012. The program received a tremendous response ,attended by over 200 participants around 65% of whom were parents of children with autism and other learning disabilities. The rest of the participants were special educators, mental health experts, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, students doing MS in psychology etc.,

ABA India’s mission is to introduce & advance the Science of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in both cities and remote locations of India. One of the major areas where ABA based methodologies have demonstrated significant breakthroughs is in developing and delivering interventions to teach children with Autism. Given that Autism, a learning and developmental disability is now reaching epidemic proportions (Latest statistics indicate 1 in 150 new births affected) ABA India aims to :

Increase awareness about successful interventions to teach skills to children with autism and empower them

Create a resource pool of trainers trained in the latest methodologies based on the science of ABA

Bring ABA as a subject of study in India to make services affordable and scaleable to meet the huge demand

Collaborate with parents, special educators, mental health specialists, occupational therapists, paediatricians etc., to share knowledge and best practices from across disciplines.

Help spread ABA applications to shape behavior and bring positive changes in society

In the Inaugural session, Mrs. Mita Bannerjee, state commissioner for the persons with Disabilities, West Bengal lit the ceremonial lamp and during her address stressed the importance of professionals in Applied Behavior Analysis working with frontline aanganwadi workers to reach services to the people with disabilities. She has asked that ABA India submit a proposal for collaborating with the disability commission to reach larger sections of the society and promised unstinting support from the disability commission.

Ms. Smita Awasthi, BCBA , founder and past president of ABA India presented a retrospect on how the pool of professionals trained in ABA has grown steadily from just one person in 2004 to 18 people now . Given the large number of children being diagnosed with autism day by day she stressed the urgent and crying need for bringing Applied Behavior Analysis as a subject of study in India to make it more affordable for aspiring students who otherwise have to pay hefty fees and study with foreign universities. While thanking parents with children with disabilities who played a pivotal role in the organisations move forward she stated unambiguously that ABA India would like to collaborate with experts from other fields such as special education teachers, occupational therapists, mental health professionals, speech and language therapists, psychiatrists and paediatricians.

Dr. Neil Martin, international representative from Behavior Analysis Certification Board, explained the board’s role in ensuring high ethical standards in the practice of the science and the message optimism it holds out to society.

Dr. Samir Parikh, Director- Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences made a hard hitting speech ( peppered liberally with humour) on the need to think beyond clinical diagnosis and treatment for children with disabilities given that barely 7% of such children have access to much needed expertise from qualified and educated professionals. He also provided very interesting insights on all that is going wrong with the education system.

In his keynote address, Dr. Per Holth from Akershus University college, Oslo, Norway presented how “ Category Mistakes” ( first defined by Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 book , the concept of mind ) lead the fields of psychology and even applied Behavior analysis to engage in circular reasoning and thereby mistakenly attribute Behaviors to entities that do not exist separately.

The conference featured 24 paper presentations from experts from India and abroad on subjects such as teaching a five year old child with autism to participate in a story telling competition, Teaching receptive identification to a 10 year old boy with autism using stimulus transfer procedures, using task analysis and prompt fading procedures to teach adaptive skills to children with autism etc.

Intensive two hour workshops addressed areas such as Teaching Joint Attention skills, Teaching Play skills, Understanding and Managing challenging Behavior, Teaching Social Verbal and Non- Verbal Behavior, Addressing Feeding disorders and Using the Power of Positive Reinforcement to teach new skills and build socially appropriate behaviors.

These workshops were conducted by eminent professionals from overseas and from India. The facilitators included Dr. Neil Martin , Phd., BCBA- D from United Kingdom, Dr. Per Holth from Norway, Dr. Joyce Tu, BCBA-D from United States, Dr. Geetika Agarwal, BCBA-D from United States, Mr. Corey Robertson, MS, BCBA, United states and Ms. Smita Awasthi, BCBA, India.

The valedictory function saw parents of children sharing success stories using principles of ABA. The presentations showed data based studies with video vignettes on how speech emerged in a 13 year old girl with autism, how a 12 year old girl in the autism spectrum learned a variety of occupational,daily living and leisure skills such as embroidery, cutting vegetables, drying out clothes, singing and making chappathis, how a mother taught her boy to respond to instructions and his name being called out.

In his concluding Vote of thanks, the President, Mr. Sridhar Aravamudhan thanked the parents and professionals in the field for turning out in large numbers and participating in an amazing knowledge sharing experience. He also announced Chennai as the venue for the fourth Annual conference to be held in Dec 2013.